A look at at who looked good at the first WWE Saturday Night's Main Event of the year, and who didn't.
This weekend marked the first time since 1992 that WWE ran "Saturday Night's Main Event" without John Cena under contract. The show had a lot to live up to after the previous edition, and was packed to the brim with contenders' matches, brawls, and a "for the last time" encounter between two of wrestling's best.
As always, there were plenty of winners and plenty of losers. The fastidious results page has already handled the literal winners and losers of the night, and the staff have also made their opinions known on the show, which leaves the metaphorical, allegorical, and all the other "-als" you can think of. Sometimes winners are losers, sometimes losers are winners, and sometimes things are exactly as they seem to be. Winners like Shinsuke Nakamura, Sami Zayn, or Cody Rhodes and Jacob Fatu, losers like Damian Priest, or AJ Styles, the first SNME of 2026 had it all.
Enough of my bloviating, let's break down who came out of Saturday's show looking good, and who, well, didn't.
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Winner: Shinsuke Nakamura
Shinsuke Nakamura has been written off as functionally retired for most of his WWE run, with memetic choruses of "He's just there to surf" ringing out anytime he underwhelms in a big match capacity. I have always respected Nakamura's ability to pick up a paycheck for the bare minimum, but his ruse is up, as he proved on Saturday that he still has that dog in him.
The former IWGP Intercontinental Heavyweight Champion turned on the classic Nakamura flair for his final match with AJ Styles. The two men had an elongated feud in 2018 that never achieved any acclaim close to their 2016 Wrestle Kingdom classic. Finally, the two men have had a match worthy of their reputations in a WWE ring. Styles is heading off, either to retirement or to AEW, but Nakamura has proven that there are still ways to inspire him to greatness.
Now that I've said that, prepare for Shinsuke to once again get some kind of weird, sudden push when WWE hopes to sign EVIL or SANADA and then have the push aborted the second someone puts pen to paper. But still, for now, it's nice to know that version of Shinsuke Nakamura still exists in there, somewhere.
Loser: AJ Styles
I think AJ Styles is smart for foregoing a Triple H-scripted retirement run. If he goes to AEW, I think he'll fit in there pretty nicely. If he doesn't, I think he has a nice legacy to lean on.
But there's something unquestionably hollow about the middle ground between "unceremoniously released" and "grand retirement tour" that AJ Styles has landed on for his last few weeks in WWE. If rumors are to be believed, he will likely be fed to Gunther, for the former World Heavyweight Champion's third retirement in the last calendar year. It's a kind of ignoble end for the "Phenomenal" one.
The match was good, and I've already mentioned the legacy Styles will be leaving behind him, but retiring in the doldrums of January, at an event in Saudi Arabia, just doesn't feel right. Granted, John Cena retired on a random SNME in Washington DC, so this is par for the course for WWE, but it's still an awkward ending for one of the most influential wrestlers of our young century.
Winners: Cody Rhodes and Jacob Fatu
The most memorable match of the night wasn't even a match. It was a no-contest that saw two guys beat the hell out of each other around the arena, until Drew McIntyre showed up to throw someone off a ledge. For lack of a better phrase, it f***ing ruled.
I had very little interest in Cody Rhodes vs. Jacob Fatu before this brawl. I assumed it was going to be a rather perfunctory win for Rhodes, as he gets his momentum back on the road to WrestleMania, but now I am primed and ready for whatever no rules fight these two have to settle this unsettled score.
Rhodes is seemingly untouchable, but Fatu is vulnerable to losses, but I'm happy to see WWE grow a modicum of backbone with him. He's simply too good to be enhancement to Cody Rhodes. I still completely expect Rhodes to win the follow-up match, and the feud in general, but now there's an inkling of hope that this will be a breakout year for Fatu. This could all be completely upended by the Royal Rumble, like so many things are, but Fatu is an imposing, hard-hitting foil to Rhodes's white-meat babyface act. Here's hoping to a nice long, violent feud.
Loser: Damian Priest
Sami Zayn is on his way to Riyadh as Number One Contender. Trick Williams is the newly-promoted former-NXT Champion with plenty to prove. Randy Orton is a seasoned veteran, who is staring down the barrel of retirement and is fairly Teflon, win or lose. Damian Priest is just kinda there. The last few years of Judgment Day drama worked out great for Rhea Ripley, and it turned out great for Dominik Mysterio, and Liv Morgan, but Damian Priest is now just eating pinfalls so that Trick Williams doesn't have to.
He's fallen in an almost-indefinable way. I can't actually figure out the exact moment, maybe it was his middling World Heavyweight Championship reign, but all the promise of Priest's early days in WWE seems to have gone unfulfilled. He's too likable to be a good guy, and he's too big and goth to be a babyface. If there weren't already an entire stable of people trying, and failing, to do so, I'd say that Priest should take a page from The Undertaker's playbook. Alas, he's stuck as a Big Evil version of himself, eating pins and cashing checks.
Winner: Sami Zayn
Sami Zayn just might do it. He's a living legend in Saudi Arabia, and Drew McIntyre is prone to being humiliated in big match world title situations. Sami Zayn might just be WWE Champion by this time next week.
Zayn didn't exactly go into SNME as an underdog, but with two easy pinfalls in Trick Williams and Damian Priest, it felt like Randy Orton was one or two RKOs from punching his ticket to Riyadh. But Sami Zayn did the near-impossible and bested Randy Orton on a show run by Paul Levesque. Obviously, Zayn could be in a position to really get some heat on Drew McIntyre. Crushing Zayn's dreams in Saudi Arabia would definitely cement his status as a heel world champion.
But for now, the skies are clear, the Rumble venue has been suspiciously finished being built in record time, and Zayn could be just days away from finally becoming a world champion in WWE. If he does, especially in Riyadh, the ovation is going to be one of the biggest pops in the history of this weird little artform we all follow.
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Read the original article on Wrestling Inc.
Category: General Sports
